The period immediately preceding a World Cup is typically one of optimism. The traditional signs that the big show is coming are the opening of new stadiums, inclusive marketing and merchandise campaigns, the release of a tournament song or quirky mascot, and so on. This time, pre-tournament preparations are taking shape a little differently.
Thanks to Donald Trump and his determination to pursue economic armageddon against the US’s co-hosts, Canada and Mexico, the tone for the 2026 World Cup is being set not by Shakira or an anthropomorphic keffiyeh but by reciprocal tariffs, a flurry of cross-border insults, and crumbling diplomatic relations between the host nations. Trump confirmed on Tuesday that the United States will begin levying taxes on the majority of imports from Canada and Mexico. Mexico appears to be retaliating similarly to Canada’s immediate response. On your way into the Trade War World Cup, please give your host a 25 percent tip. If things continue on their current course, the 2026 tournament will be the first installment of the World Cup to be co-hosted by the antagonists of an active international economic conflict.
Whether things do continue as they are is, of course, difficult to predict: Trump’s approach to policy is famously erratic, and the protectionism that marked his first administration was leavened by various exemptions and carve-outs to the tariffs imposed on trading partners, a cycle of aggression and moderation that could be repeated this time round. With the first match still 15 months away, there’s plenty of time for the deterioration in diplomatic relations between the co-hosts to give way to reconciliation. But as things stand today, with Trump and his cabinet lackeys hellbent on trashing the global economy and humiliating traditional allies, that hope seems pretty remote. The US – which is due to host 75% of the matches during the 2026 tournament, and every fixture from the quarter-finals onwards – looks set to steam into the approaching World Cup with a spirit of hospitality roughly equivalent to Roy Keane sizing up Alf-Inge Haaland’s knee.
The World Cup enters uncharted territory as a result of Trump’s mercantile war against America’s co-hosts, adding to many of the uncertainties surrounding the upcoming event. Tariffs on their own won’t directly affect the staging; the schedule has already been decided, so the World Cup could go ahead even if the host nations are at economic loggerheads, with each country taking care of its part of the tournament in a spirit of steadfast mutual ignorance. However, an ongoing trade war would undoubtedly make things significantly more awkward. During his first term, Trump wrote to Fifa to reassure them that there would be no travel bans or other restrictions during the tournament and that “all eligible athletes, officials, and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.” This was while the bids for 2026 were being evaluated. That pledge is already at risk thanks to Elon Musk’s incineration of the federal government, which has led to massive blowouts in visa processing times and could leave many fans unable to enter the US.
Things could rapidly deteriorate if Trump’s diplomatic and economic offensive against the US’s neighbors is combined with that uncertainty. Travel for fans between the host nations seems the part of the tournament most likely to end up being affected, and there’s a very real question of how far the contagion from deteriorating diplomatic relations will spread: a breakdown in cooperation at the highest levels of government between the hosts could seriously affect logistical and security coordination, the information sharing that makes big events like the World Cup run smoothly.
In the absence of a security incident, the tournament may still proceed despite such challenges. But given the cruelty and volatility of the current US administration – plus its power to compel obsequious submission from even the leaders of the world’s most advanced economies – there’s every reason to assume the worst.
Will Trump insist that the United States receive some form of compensation from Canada and Mexico for the tournament’s expenses? Will he cook up a plan with home broadcaster Fox to refer to the US’s northern neighbor as “the state of Canada”? Could the US impose a World Cup entry tax on visitors, or force them to pay into the US’s new strategic crypto reserve? Will every foreign team competing in the United States be required to sing The Star-Spangled Banner in a special rendition? Will visiting stars be required, like Trump’s cabinet members frequently are, to laud the US president during a televised World Cup struggle session in the West Wing (“Stand up, Kylian”)? Could the Roy Cohn Cup replace the Jules Rimet Trophy? So exceptional is the pettiness of America’s leaders that none of these scenarios seems even remotely implausible; and Trump, who in 2018 threatened nations considering voting against the US’s World Cup bid with retribution, has form in this area.
A tournament that should be the catalyst for soccer’s next big push into the world’s heftiest media market – and a platform for the expression of an eternal bond between the three leading nations of North America – now risks turning into a month-long dummy spit from the most childish president in US history.
Fifa has given itself little authority to weigh in on the matter, given how central the US – the obvious senior partner in this coalition of hosting unequals – is to the staging of the tournament and how cravenly toadyish Gianni Infantino has been in his courting of Trump. Trump refers to the Fifa president, or “Johnny,” as he has formed a partnership with his US counterpart that he describes as “absolutely crucial” to the success of the World Cup in 2026. But this is a strategy built on subordination and fealty, not a meeting of peers: from the day in 2018 that Infantino yucked it up for the cameras with Trump in the Oval Office, presenting the president with a special Trump 26 jersey (“You are part of the Fifa team,” he said) and a red card that then-president of the US Soccer Federation Carlos Cordeiro joked could be useful at “the next media session” (lol!), Fifa has effectively hitched its fortunes to Trump’s, making itself a tool of the Maga project.
This spineless display of loyalty is at odds with Fifa’s nominal political neutrality, but it won Infantino prime seats at this year’s Super Bowl and has turned him into a perpetual background presence in Trumpworld, where he can now be regularly found beaming vacantly off the president’s shoulder during various functions, a useful sporting idiot ready to defend the US leader to the hilt. Fifa did not exactly have much integrity, to begin with, but the scale of its leader’s prostration is extraordinary. So completely has Infantino debased himself that after he witnessed Trump describe Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” at a recent event in Miami, he immediately praised his American host for promoting a message of “peace and unity”.
A man who is so deeply enmeshed in Trump’s cult will never be able to improve relations between the nations hosting 2026. For Infantino and Fifa, it’s Trump or bust.
With the global economy fracturing and the notion of American leadership of a “rules-based international order” in the trash, there’s a bigger question to confront: can football continue to be a globalizing force in a deglobalizing world? The guiding direction of the times is away from international cooperation and towards tariffs, export controls, the formation of trade blocs, and the carving out of great power spheres of interest. This retreat of nations and cultures behind protective walls is at odds with the World Cup’s abidingly sunny message of common humanity and growing shared territory of footballing competition – not to mention the expansion of the tournament itself, which next year will swell to 48 teams.
Historically, the co-hosting of major soccer tournaments has expressed either longstanding cross-border friendship or a desire for détente: on the previous occasion on which the World Cup took place in more than one country, in 2002, Japan and South Korea co-hosted the tournament in the face of a long history of mutual antagonism and the lingering bitterness caused by Japan’s wartime atrocities. Interestingly, given the current circumstances, the lead-up to that World Cup was not always smooth political sailing: most notably, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in 2001 fueled a diplomatic row that briefly threatened to derail the tournament.
But cooler heads prevailed, tensions eased, and in retrospect, cooperation between the two hosts – which included, in addition to all the regular logistical coordination, important legal breakthroughs such as the signature of a mutually binding extradition treaty – can be seen as a meaningful marker in the long road towards Japanese-Korean reconciliation. Two decades later, in the shadow of a resurgent China, détente is slowly giving way to rapprochement: Seoul-Tokyo cooperation is getting stronger, cross-border trade is growing, and the majority of young South Koreans now have a positive opinion of Japan. Could the co-hosts of the upcoming World Cup overcome the current economic turmoil, unite peacefully for a common objective next year, and come to their contented diplomatic conclusion? It seems unlikely under the administration of Donald Trump. The damage being done to what’s left of both the global order and FIFA’s credibility may be so severe that future World Cups will unfold amid a Cold War-style atmosphere of mutual suspicion and sabotage. Certainly, there is nothing in the choice of Saudi Arabia to host the 2034 tournament to suggest the World Cup’s imminent liberation from the